China's One Child Policy............

[DanS]

"Their population is skyrocketing"

The US population is growing faster than China's.

[Frankychan]

well.....you get the idea.

They got more people than we do right now and if pop. growth is exponential.....whooo!....i don't even wanna think about those numbers.

[Aeson]

I've been looking for a link.. can't seem to find any from reliable sources yet. Here is a report on the grain production for the last century. (have no idea about the validity of the source though)

http://wwwwp.mext.go.jp/ekg2000/index-4.html

It shows a linear increase in production since the 50's at a pretty good rate. The problem lies in the fact that population growth is not linear, but exponential.

Also notice that since the early 70's the growth rate has been dropping quite nicely. When was China's 1 child policy implemented again?

The point about a selfish generation or two would relate to the numbers in the 60's. In 50 years at those rates we would have over 15 billion people. Our food production capacity would need to keep pace. Maybe it would, but at some point the food production will have to drop off. There is only so much room on this planet to plant crops.

Moving away from meat products which aren't very efficient, and developing aquaculture can delay the inevitable. At some point though, people have to wake up and realize that there are limited resources on our earth. We can't support an exponential increase in population indefinitely.

[el freako]

There seems to be a lot of people arguing for china's one-child policy that also belive in a zero-sum world.

If you have more people you also have more bodies to work the land and, much more crucially, more minds to think up better ways of working the land.

What china's policy has done is to rapidly change the desired number of children - far more rapidly than would have happened 'naturally' during the rapid industrialization of the last 20 years - I think that this can be used as a partial justification of the policy which, as has been pointed out, is mainly enforced by monetary fines.

Mass starvation due to overpopulation almost never happens - people adjust their behaviour long before that happens.
Almost all famines are caused by war or bad government policies - and they usually only happen when you get a combination of both.

I cannot think of one famine that has been caused entirely by overpopulation - indeed i'm not sure i've come across a good definition of 'overpopulation'.

[Aeson]

Overpopulation - where the population exceeds the ability of the environment to provide for.

Global overpopulation is a point we haven't reached yet, of course there will be no good examples. Local overpopulation has occured, and usually results in migrations. Unless we have the ability to migrate to other planets, global overpopulation would entail malnurishment or starvation.

Giving birth to children assuming 'they will figure out a way to feed themselves in ways we can't do now' is a ludicrous gamble. Population needs to be limited by current abilities to feed that population, not by speculative abilities that might be possible in the future. If those abilities change in the future, then the population limits can safely change with them.

[Wraith]

My gods...

Okay, so I've only read this last page, but from the looks of things no one has pointed something important out. Everyone here is assuming that population growth will continue to be exponential indefinitely. This is already not the case. Population growth has leveled off for much of the first world, and it's definitely slowed overall.

IIRC, the last decent estimates I heard were that the world population would stabilize somewhere between 8 and 11 billion people, which is well within our capacity to support.

Remember, middle-class people don't want a lot of kids. It's bad enough driving them around town to clubs and sports when you've only got one or two...

Wraith
Earth is 90% full. Please delete anyone you can.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Wraith, el freako. Exactly right!

Famines are dead thanks to capitalism. Adjustments are made well before it gets that bad.

And yes, the world population will stabilize. When countries hit industrialization, it is only natural that population skyrockets. Medicines drop the death rate and keep the birth rate high. In the next period of development, the people tend to have less children, because their time is worth more (higher paying jobs, etc.). This is why Europe is having negative population growth rates.

The closest tie to lessening population growth rates? More economic freedom for women. Why? Because when women's time is more valuable (they can go out there and make good cash), who wants to spend their lives inside with 8 children? Why not have 2 children and spend 80% of your working life doing something economically productive and making some good cash. The solution is to increase the rights for women across the world. Then, this exponential growth will fall.

[el freako]

Originally posted by Aeson
Overpopulation - where the population exceeds the ability of the environment to provide for.

A good definition, however there is an implicit assumption in it - namely that the resources of that enviroment are being exploited with the best available methods.

Originally posted by Aeson
Local overpopulation has occured, and usually results in migrations.

Could you give a couple of examples?
If there was overpopulation then you would expect their population to fall and stay below it's peak (at least untill there was an improvement in technology)

Originally posted by Aeson
Giving birth to children assuming 'they will figure out a way to feed themselves in ways we can't do now' is a ludicrous gamble.

If you think that's a ludicrous gamble then I assume you would think it a safe one to bet against the sun rising tomorrow - just because it's happened so many times before is no guarantee for the future eh?

Improvements in food production have been happening almost continuously for the last 300 years and have accellerated during the last 50 - there are many area's of the world which could increase their food production by several multiples just by adopting the best practices available today.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Wraith, el freako. Exactly right!

Famines are dead thanks to capitalism. Adjustments are made well before it gets that bad.

And yes, the world population will stabilize. When countries hit industrialization, it is only natural that population skyrockets. Medicines drop the death rate and keep the birth rate high. In the next period of development, the people tend to have less children, because their time is worth more (higher paying jobs, etc.). This is why Europe is having negative population growth rates.

Um....i don't wanna seem as sarcastic...but Africa is one place that still suffers from famine and malnourishment. True, foreign aid comes in and helps, but famine is not dead.

But you are right on world pop stabilization. Example-
In a psychology experiment done on rats, a food source was made abundant and the rat population did "pop-boom". However, over time reproduction failed and the population eventually stabilized.

However, I don't want humanity to go to the edge where we just keep on reproducing until we consume every last natural resource available.

Here's something from a certain movie that I found rather prophetic:

Agent Smith:

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

[Aeson]

Population 'growth' is exponential by nature, regardless of what the exponent is. Any exponent over 1 will increase population, anything under 1 will decrease it. If you change the number of children per generation the difference compounds with each generation. That's all that's meant by exponential. The growth of world population is dropping off, which is a good thing. China's one child policy is one of the reasons for that.

Limits on population growth can be by personal choice of course, and that is the best case scenario. If people aren't willing to limit themselves through personal choice, that's were we run into problems. China was having population growth problems, and their government stepped in and did something about it.

Just because humans have the ability to avoid overpopulation doesn't mean overpopulation is not a potential problem. It's through understanding that it is a potential problem that we can avoid it.

Remember, middle-class people don't want a lot of kids.

Middle class doesn't guarantee that people won't want a lot of kids though. Living in Utah this is readily apparent, most Mormon families have a high standard of living and several children. On their own Mormon's could achieve overpopulation eventually (many generations) with what probably is around 4 children per family average. Hopefully common sense would take hold before then.

In the case that people don't limit population growth themselves, I think we have to reserve the right to limit it as a society.

[Imran Siddiqui]

but Africa is one place that still suffers from famine and malnourishment. True, foreign aid comes in and helps, but famine is not dead.

Silly me... forgot that . Yet, in those states, you will see a lack of a capitalist economic order.

Population 'growth' is exponential by nature, regardless of what the exponent is. Any exponent over 1 will increase population, anything under 1 will decrease it.

And in places like Europe and the US (if you exclude immigrants from the equation) the growth UNDER 1. Population growth does not continue forever. It does stabilize.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

but Africa is one place that still suffers from famine and malnourishment. True, foreign aid comes in and helps, but famine is not dead.

Silly me... forgot that . Yet, in those states, you will see a lack of a capitalist economic order.

got me there.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I misposted up there... what I meant to say that capitalism has eliminated famines, wherever capitalism has taken hold... not that it eliminated all famines.

But thanks for the catching the mistake.

[Aeson]

Could you give a couple of examples?

As a population grows near the limit of it's food production capacity (or that capacity falls for whatever reason), excess population moves on. It doesn't have to be the only migration pressure, but it has factored in many. When there isn't enough food, people will go where they can find it.

It doesn't stop the progression of our ability to provide for more people through agricultural advancement. Populations continue to grow as the ability to support that growth does.

In some cases the food source moves or is diminished. The plains Indians followed the buffalo in almost a constant migration. Without the buffalo they didn't have the means to provide food (among other things) for their population. The migration into the Americas from Asia was much the same thing.

The dust bowl in America is another change in environment that produced human migration. The potato famine another. These types of uncontrollable events produced the more visable/extensive migrations.

A migration based on a constant food source and expanding population is going to be less exstensive. It may be moving to the next valley because there is no more farm land in the current one. A much smaller migration in terms of scale, and probably coupled with a desire for exploration most often. The homebodies stay and work the current area, and the restless move off to find new homes.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And in places like Europe and the US (if you exclude immigrants from the equation) the growth UNDER 1. Population growth does not continue forever. It does stabilize.

One way or the other, yes it does stabilize. I never claimed differently.

The west has stabilized population growth through personal choice. China was having population growth problems and it was government intervention which stabilized their population growth. If there were a circumstance where neither the population nor the government were willing to limit population growth, then the environment would stabilize the population through it's own means.